On 21 Jun 2004 13:25:50 -0700 Fernando Pablo Lopez-Lezcano <nando@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On Mon, 2004-06-21 at 10:56, Matthew Barber wrote: > > -> > > > and now m-audio. Here's to German audio excellence! Those cold winters > > > drive you indoors to tinker with great machines and perfect them, I > > > guess. :) > > > > I don't think M-Audio is a german company, though. And while M-Audio > > makes some great products they also make some very understandard ones: > > Most of their USB audio cards are very hard to get to work on Linux, > > if at all, contrary to what M-Audio says on their website.<- > > > > > > About M-Audio... we had been using a Delta 1010 in our studio, with some > > heavy 96k usage under RH9 and basically a CCRMA setup. We had two of > > these cards fry and become totally unusable - they had a terrible > > high-pitched hum and pretty much no audio output. > > We also had a problem with some of the 1010's. The audio sort of died > and the power led in the front panel of the rack mounted ad/da unit > would not light properly. Turned out a couple of electrolytic capacitors > in the internal power supply voltage doubler had died. We just changed > them... > > -- Fernando > Me and Alexia each have an Audiophile 2496 in our persoanl machines and are very happy with them. We have a 1010 in the music room, and had the same problem as Fernando. The two capacitors are in a very hot area of the power supply, and seem to be part of a voltage doubler if I remember correctly. That's probably the best way to fry an electrolytic. After replacing the caps I decided that the 1010 just ran too darn hot there in the top spot on the rack; so I mounted a computer case fan to blow air towards the back of the 1010 (at the power supply side, so that air blew in the side vent of the 1010). I used a small 7 volt dc wall transformer to power the 12v fan, which runs real quiet, but keeps the 1010 nicely cool. The 1010 hasn't had any more problems since the new caps and the external cooling. When the one cap just about gave up, I started to get distortion on high level output signals. One of the power supply rails on the audio part of the 1010's external box(where this all happened) was at half voltage with a high amount of hum on it. Still, there was no hum at the output, which suggests that the audio components and design is very low noise and solid. Common mode power supply rejection is fantastic on the 1010. It just seems that whoever disigned the power supply sectiom of the rack part really blew it. If the caps go again, I think I'm going to pump in the voltages from a decent external power supply. Other then that, the delta 1010 is a wonderfull card that I'm very happy with. Tracey
